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There is no work of God in which the members of the Trinity are not jointly operative. This is true of creation, redemption and worship. It is by the perfecting causality of the Spirit that the Church’s worship offered in the Son reaches the Father. As a perfecter, the Spirit leads us to the Son, through whom our being and our act (worship) have free access to the Fatherly sanctuary in the same Godhead. Only Spirit-perfected worship is true worship. Not only the Spirit joined through the Son to the Father is the proper object, but also the causative agency of worship, the one who exalts the community in Christ to the heavenly throne of the Father. . . . Worship as such is a gift of grace: what God begins in us He shall complete. God is the alpha and the omega of worship.

The sacramental actions of the church—baptism and the Lord’s Supper—are concrete, tangible, and visible means by which the church takes the very stuff of creation, water, bread, and cup, and in response to the invitation and command of Christ reenacts the wonder of the gospel.In so doing, the material creation is a means by which God’s grace is known.

—Gordon T. Smith, A Holy Meal: The Lord’s Supper in the Life of the Church,28

The pious soul that eyes only God . . . can have no stop in its progress; light and darkness equally assist him. In the light he looks up to God. In the darkness he lays hold of God, and so they both do him the same good.

In Revelation, after harlot Jerusalem falls, angels issue two suppers: One is an invitation to the birds of the heavens to eat the flesh of kings and the flesh of commanders and the flesh of mighty men and the flesh of horses and of those who sit on them and the flesh of all men, both free men and slaves. The other is the invitation to the saints to the marriage supper of the Lamb. The two meals are inseparable, and they point to the two alternative destinies for human beings: We are either eaten and consumed in the wrath of God, or we are invited to consume bread and wine at the marriage supper of the Lamb.

The first angel summons people from every nation and tribe and tongue to “fear God and give Him glory, because the hour of His judgment has come’ and to ‘worship Him who made the heavens, the earth, the sea and the springs of water (14:6-7).This ‘eternal gospel’ recalls the vision of chapter 4 and summons the whole creation to acknowledge God as Creator and Lord of history. . . . This passage suggests that evangelism can be viewed from one perspective as a call to worship God.

This is, I think, a very significant thing in the NT, and certainly here in Revelation chapter 5—if the goal of worship is to admire Him in all of His majesty and to cast our crowns before Him and crown Him Lord of all, then notice that in this portrayal of worship, all worship flows from Christ’s leadership and through Christ’s mediation. Isn’t it interesting that John sees the Lion/Lamb standing right at the front of the throne of God, and from Him the Spirit of God flowing to all those who are present in heaven’s glory—as though to say, your worship of the One who is seated on the throne need first of all to be conducted by the One who stands at the front of the throne. And it always need to come through the Spirit by the Son to the One who is seated on the throne. Because, as we have noticed already, He is not only the Mediator of our reconciliation; He is the Mediator of our adoration in worship.